You all have seen Slumdog Millionaire, right? Well, if not: don’t. The movie is full of stereotypes. Kids stealing shit, slum life like hell and a Slumdog boy only being able to win this quiz by luck and not because he has some real knowledge. Or does the movie really show India as it is? One simple question for you, before continuing reading: when thinking of India, what do think of?

Right, an angry title..
Why? Because bureaucracy can be rather frustrating, especially if it seems unnecessary. And boy did we encounter superfluous, illogical and random rules and regulations! Driving your own car to another continent requires a lot of planning, changing set plans and finding your way in the maze that we call bureaucracy. This article is to tell you about the logistics of moving your car around the world and to let you in on some tips (and maybe it also helps in airing my frustrations…).

Josephine and I were camping at a beautiful dam, where the crocodiles were chilling on the rocks in and the leopards were hiding in the shade on the hills around us. Flamingos were gathering in the water, some farmers were working at their land and some animal lovers came by to take photos of this spectacular wildlife. One of them was Dr. Dilip Arora.

Traffic in India is crazy. Roads in Pakistan are terrible. In Iran we can not read the road signs. The toll is way too expensive everywhere we go. Everyone is honking at us, continuously, since we have left Europe. We can never find a service station anywhere we go. We are totally lost and it is hard these days, driving a car all the way to another continent.

Before we left we had arranged only a few things. The Carnet de Passage for the car, a visa for Iran and a visa for Pakistan. That was about it. After Pakistan we would see how to get a visa for India, how to drive through Myanmar and what countries we would visit before getting into Indonesia. We had no idea what we actually wanted to see in the countries we were going to visit. The only plan we really had was to drive our car from The Netherlands to Indonesia.